"Here is what I don't understand," Annie said. She and Auggie had finished a bottle of wine and she was curled into his arms on the couch. "I've met some of your brothers, I've heard about your parents, and I know you. What doesn't make sense is how you ended up in the Army. Were you recruited first, and sent for military efforts?"

Auggie ran his hand over her arm and calmly replied "I graduated college in the Spring of 2001. The CIA wasn't recruiting then."

"Were you in ROTC?"

"Nope. I had a full ride through a merit scholarship."

"Did you always want to be a soldier?"

Auggie laughed. "Hardly."

"So?"

Auggie tilted his head toward Annie, enjoying the simple heat of her body and presence next to him. "I did it to piss off my dad."

Annie laughed. "That sounds like you."

"I went home for Thanksgiving during my last year of college, and he had three interviews lined up for me with his friends from the country club. I sat in those offices, looked around, and felt my life slipping away. The offers were good - and they weren't the only ones I had. The dot-com industry was booming, and I had excelled at a startup over the summer the year before. I felt like all those people had a person they wanted me to be, and none of it was what I actually wanted. I looked at my brothers, all four of them were pushed to be what dad wanted them to be. So when I got back on campus, I signed a contract to join the Army just after graduation.

"It was just a three-year commitment, I liked the idea of the adventure it would offer, and it seemed safe. I didn't even know who the next president would be, they were still counting the ballots of the two-thousand election. I was so ignorant of foreign affairs that the idea of going to war seemed unthinkable."

"Oh." Annie replied. The time he described sounded so far away.

"Anyways, I joined the Army to piss off dad. I ended up being a damn good officer, and was just recruited for Special Forces training in early September of 2001."

"Holy shit." Annie replied.

"Yeah. Things changed a bit. Fairly certain a few guys wet their pants when they realized what they were signed up for."

"And you?"

"I knew that I should be scared, but I kept thinking about those offices in Chicago, so sterile and stifling. I knew that we were all going to die. We all thought that we were going to be shipped to the middle east the next week, and promptly die. But instead of being scared, I was energized. Before, the training exercises were all just games. Suddenly they became something meaningful."

"So when were you recruited?"

"The CIA came to me in October of 2001, just when they were figuring out how to increase their numbers and put all these new operatives through training. I stayed with the Army and was sent through every training course at Ft. Bragg, and a couple at locations people don't even know the Army utilizes. Then I spent the rest of my 'Army' Career on the Farm."

"They were creating a super soldier." Annie stated.

Auggie was quiet a moment, still running his fingers along her skin. "And yet, I still ended up at the desk job."

Annie was quiet a moment. "Do you ever regret it?"

"Not for a moment." Auggie replied without hesitation. "I could have gone straight from college to a comfortable office, but I would have never experienced really living. I would have probably felt relieved that I missed going to war, but before I enlisted I never imagined that I could end up everywhere that I've ended up. I've done everything I'm physically capable of doing, and even now I'm doing something I'm passionate about. It's far more rewarding than building the next great online shopping platform."

"And your dad?"

Auggie swallowed. "He assumes I regret every bit of it. To keep my cover, I don't worry about trying to prove him wrong."